The City of Baltimore, MD building permit statistics

How these numbers are made

Source: Open Baltimore: Housing and Building Permits 2019-Present (DHCD, ArcGIS layer Building Permits), read 18 Oct 2026. We count permits issued June 2025 through September 2026; denied and withdrawn permits are left out. The file carries no usable permit status, so it can't say which permits were finished, so no finished share is shown.

Building and demolition permits the City of Baltimore issues inside city limits: combination permits for homes and for commercial buildings (which cover building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical work in one permit) and demolition (razing) permits. Use-and-occupancy permits, temporary event permits, zoning appeals, permit modifications and extensions of earlier permits in the same file are not counted. Baltimore County, which surrounds the city, is a separate jurisdiction with its own permit office and is not in this file.

• The city's file names no contractor, so there are no contractor lists, rankings or firm pages for Baltimore.
• The file has no status and no final inspection date, so we show no finished share and no time to final; every permit is listed as open.
• The city moved to a new permit system in early 2025 (permit numbers changed from COM to BRCM and BCCM, and February 2025 has almost no permits), and monthly counts settle only from June 2025, so the window starts there and is shorter than two years.
• Most work is issued as one combination permit for building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical work, and the file has no trade field, so the kind of work is read from the permit's description: a permit that names one trade counts under that trade, and a renovation that covers several counts as a remodel. Fire-protection, sign and antenna work counts as other.
• Homes are the city's residential combination permits; commercial combination permits, including those for apartment buildings, count as other.
• The value is the cost declared on the permit. The ZIP code comes from the city's property records for the permit's block and lot.

Counts are permits, not jobs: one job can need several permits. Nobody paid to be on this page and nobody can. Sources and definitions →